The Streisand effect

 
This is a new term to me. It was used over on simra.net in reference to the attempt by students at Wilfred Laurier University to dictate to the Laurier Freethought Alliance [Follow-up on the WLU controversy]. I had to look up the term on Wikipedia.

Just in case there are any other old people out there, here's the definition.

The "Streisand effect" is a term used to describe a phenomenon on the Internet where an attempt to censor or remove (in particular, by the means of cease-and-desist letters) a certain piece of information (for example, a photograph, a file, or even a whole website) backfires. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet, or distributed on file-sharing networks in a short period of time.[1][2] Mike Masnick said he jokingly coined the term in January 2005, “to describe [this] increasingly common phenomenon.”[3] The effect is related to John Gilmore's observation that, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

The term Streisand effect originally referred to a 2003 incident in which Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the publicly available collection of twelve thousand California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns.[4][5][1] Adelman claims he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project.[6] Paul Rogers of the San Jose Mercury News later noted that the picture of Streisand’s house was popular on the Internet.

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